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She then saw that a sheet was folded back and could see movement in the divan drawer and material inside that matched the suit jacket.

When she demanded to know who was there, her daughter replied, ‘Mr Welsh.’

Mr Whelan added: ‘The mother ordered the defendant to get out from under the bed and she recognised him immediately as her daughter’s maths teacher from the school.’

The mother called the school and police and Welsh was arrested later that day.

He told police that the sex was consensual, the girl was 16 and he did not believe she was a pupil at the time because she had finished her GCSE exams.

The court heard Welsh bombarded the youngster with obscene text messages before having sex with her

Welsh tried to get the charges relating
to the abuse of a position of trust thrown out for the same reason, but
changed his plea to guilty when his application was rejected.

Mr
Whelan said the girl now ‘worries about whispers and gossip’ but is
otherwise ‘coping very well’, but her mother ‘feels betrayed’. Nicola
Gatto, defending, said Welsh, a St Andrews University graduate, was a
man of ‘extremely good character’ with a seven-year ‘unblemished
history’ at the school, where he was assistant head of Year Ten.

She
said his wife, a GP, described him as a ‘fundamentally good person’ and
had decided to stand by him, but the affair had been ‘utterly
mortifying’ for her.

Welsh is banned from teaching for life and now
works as a window salesman, she said. Miss Gatto added: ‘He’s lost his
standing in the community, he’s lost his good character and he’s lost
the career he loved.

‘Quite what possessed him to embark on this
course of conduct is really unclear. He was flattered by the attention
that this young woman gave him. It seems that he became utterly carried
away with himself.

Welsh avoided jail after Bolton Crown Court (pictured) heard the offences have ruined his career

‘He now is going to bear the cost for
that because effectively he has ruined his life. It is going to take
many years for this man to piece his life back together again.’

Judge
Elliot Knopf told Welsh that the girl was ‘impressionable’ and he could
not attribute the affair to a ‘moment of madness’ because it went on
for ‘a good number of weeks’.

He added: ‘You bear responsibility for what happened. You are nearly 20 years older than this girl.

‘You
allowed yourself to indulge in this behaviour and this activity in this
relationship. You allowed yourself to get carried away.’

As well as
the suspended prison sentence, Welsh, from Atherton, Greater Manchester,
was ordered to do 200 hours of community service and pay £500
prosecution costs.